The pandemic of inequality in Asia

COVID made the rich richer, the poor poorer. (Photo: Reuters)

Two years, 530 million cases and 6.3 millions deaths later, the world is settling into a new normal. The pandemic has changed a lot of things, and one of them is the gap between the rich and the poor. 

Before the pandemic, Asia was projected to undergo a huge economic boost, with the number of Asians living below the poverty line falling from 2 billion to less than a billion in over four decades. In fact, in East Asia and the Pacific, 33 million people were expected to rise out of poverty.

But when the pandemic hit, it left millions sick, jobless, and without proper access to healthcare and social protection. The 33 million who were expected to move upwards economically remained poor, and 5 million who otherwise would not have been at risk of poverty became poorer. Globally, the world’s poor doubled to 500 million during the first year of the pandemic.

The problems of the pandemic unraveled a lot of other issues, and faults in our economic systems that make life all the more difficult for the poorest of us.

Great...more billionaires

According to data from Oxfam, in 2020, 147 million people all across Asia lost their full-time jobs. In the meantime, billionaires made $1.46 trillion. Kontinentalist comments that this amount would be enough to provide a salary of $10,000 to each person who lost their job. 

The pandemic triggered a steep rise in demand for medical products and services, as well as other equipment related to pandemic response– which of course, led to a surge of income for the founders and CEOs of these companies. This resulted in 20 new billionaires from countries like China, Hong Kong, India, and Japan. 

While the rest of the people grew poorer, the rich amassed more and more wealth as a result of the pandemic. In South and Southeast Asia, the top 1% wealthiest people hold 21% of the region’s total wealth, and the top 10% own 54.8%. By comparison, the bottom 50% own only 12.3%.

More than money

The pandemic highlighted a lot of systemic issues in Asia, beyond just widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Household surveys from May 2020 found that 64% of Indonesians, 50% of Pakistanis, and 46% of Filipinos were unable to receive medical attention due to lack of funds.

Some sects of society were more affected than others. Women were more heavily impacted by the pandemic than men, as they were more likely to lose their jobs and handle unpaid labor like household chores and child and elderly care. The pandemic left millions of children out of school and without access to remote education, and lastly, with a long history of marginalization and discrimination, ethnic groups all around Asia did not have access to key services and resources.

There’s plenty that could have been done to prevent a lot of this from happening, like investing in social protection, for one. But countries in East Asia and the Pacific were spending less than 1% of their GDP on social programs prior to the pandemic.

There’s also taxing those who profited from the pandemic, as well as the existing 2,668 billionaires in the world, investing in healthcare, social welfare, and education… Basically, there’s a long laundry list of things that can and should be done so that we’ll have a safety net if and when the next global pandemic hits us.